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Anyone who listens to Denver talk radio has heard that our two Jeffco school board races represent an apocalyptic face-off between radical union-backed leftists and far-right free-market fanatics who will stop at nothing to reduce district spending.

At the final election forum Oct. 18 in Evergreen, the candidates sounded more like a gaggle of elderly British ladies disagreeing about whether the shade of the curtains matched the colors in the divan.

A campaign flier being distributed for Jeffco school board candidate Preston Branaugh contains the following conversation.
“DadVanHorn: So what did our sons learn in school today?
“Son: I learned we evolved from mud.
“Son: I learned we’ll be safer when all our firearms are confiscated.
“Son: I learned that you don’t pay enough taxes.”

The Heritage Foundation has been getting attention lately for its report on the poor. Noting that poor people have air conditioners, cable TV and an Xbox, they make the case that “poor” in America isn’t what it used to be.
Tavis Smiley, PBS pundit, and Cornell West, the eccentric author, have been traveling around the country talking about poverty. They’re not drawing much media attention. Most of us don’t want to know about the poor.

The Gallup organization recently released a stunning poll showing that 81 percent of Americans are unhappy with the way the country is being governed.
Further breaking down those poll numbers, the Gallup press release went on to note that “57 percent have little or no confidence in the federal government to solve domestic problems, exceeding the previous high of 53 percent recorded in 2010 and well exceeding the 43 percent who have little or no confidence in the government to solve international problems.”

When former state representative Kathleen Curry changed her party affiliation from Democrat to unaffiliated before the 2010 session of the Colorado General Assembly, she bit off more than any politician could be expected to chew.

When Laura Boggs was elected to the Jefferson County Board of Education two years ago, it caught a lot of people by surprise. It looked like incumbent Sue Marinelli was headed for re-election in an uncontested race until Boggs pulled and returned candidate papers just before the deadline. Running under the radar, Boggs upset the incumbent and has been a controversial and polarizing member of the school board in her first two years.

If you watched a recent college football game between the universities of Utah and Southern California, you couldn’t have missed a somewhat strange interlude when the announcers rattled off statistics about the amount of money PAC 12 universities are spending on stadiums.